The Joni Mitchell - Best Album POLL

I'm probably just sensitive because I really want Joni to live forever. But no, I don't think they specifically typically use a song by a dead musician, but when I saw the headline, it made me think Joni'd died and I hadn't heard about it. And the elephant in the room is, you know, she's been very ill...

"The Silky Veils of Ardor" is killin' me tonight.

I came across this podcast a couple weeks ago when Lilly Hiatt did an episode, and now I've been going through the backlog listening to older ones.

John Oates spoke so glowingly about Blue that I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to commit to making myself like Joni Mitchell. Even if I never do, it was a joy to hear him talk this way about an artist and album he so clearly loves.
http://mrjeremydylan.com/post/151644261850/my-favorite-album-165-john-oates-on-joni

Also, Wimmels man, chill out. Both Sides Now is such a fixture in pop culture that it hardly even registers as a Joni song anymore. It's just a song everybody knows.

DOG EAT DOG is her best album fite me.

court and spark is my favourite, weird it only got 4 votes

which that outro to help me would just loop forever

c&s is my favorite too

court and spark
hissing of summer lawns
don juan's reckless daughter / hejira
blue
for the roses

the others ive listened to quite a lot but they don't feel familiar enough to me to rank

court and spark should have stormed this. Night Ride Home is underrated, if only because of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1j0j4r_gnw

Night Ride Home has "come in from the cold" too

Surprised Don Juan gets so overlooked. Feels like the second CD of a hypothetical Hejira deluxe reissue

Well, exactly. It's a good album but I don't think there are many listeners who like it a lot who wouldn't like at least one of Hissing or Hejira better.

don juan imo is looser, warmer, more spontaneous, and free-flowing than hejira, even if the quality is slightly lower. i reach for it more than hejira

The Guardian rank Joni Mitchell's albums.

Bit of a surprise in second place.

What begins promisingly (opening track Sunny Sunday is a reminder of her 70s work) soon disappoints with rhymes as basic as “And the oil spills / And sex kills.”

I love this couplet, thanks to her sandpaper-dry delivery.

Without wanting to sound contrary, I think Blue is my least favourite of the albums I've heard and maybe the reason I was originally put off by her music, as I'd originally pegged her as a simpering MOR singer-songwriter type. It doesn't have as much of the playfulness or experimentalism of the other albums I like.
Gun-to-head I'd go for Court & Spark (which is her 'Radioactivity' in that the songs are short and you can easily listen to it as a suite).

I had a mild argument on Twitter last Tuesday on that very point: Blue is my least favorite of the major albums. The lack of sonic play is part of it; also, I can't deny that the media line for forty years has been it's her best because it's Her Most Personal Album, which, you know, bollocks to that.

"A Case of You" and "Edith and the Kingpin" are two great songs with vastly different arrangements and intentions, but I'd rather listen to the latter.

Sometimes an album full of brilliant songs is more than plenty, there's tons of playfulness in the playing and writing on Blue. Not that I ever want to play the best of game with Joni

yeah i agree with dog latin and alfred, the arrangements on court & spark elevate it way above blue for me, and it also feels just much more melodically generous (which is also aided by the arrangements)

there's tons of playfulness in the playing and writing on Blue

otm, disagree pretty aggressively with this run of posts

the arrangements may not be as sumptuous or thick as on court or hissing but it keeps thinking up ways to be inventive without necessarily amplifying it, i'm thinking of the intro to "all i really want" with those guitars chicken-scratching away in the emptiness, an unsettled and yearning feeling that the rest of the album lives in. also needless to say the title track sets up for the roses which sets up the next few records etc. and this is not even getting into "the last time i saw richard" as a composition

This makes no sense to me, Blue is pretty much all about the quantum leap in melodic inventiveness and freedom and sheer fun. I love Ladies of the Canyon but it sounds very formal by comparison, you don’t get many couplets like “he gave me back my smile / but he kept my camera to sell”, or vertiginous melodic lifts like “onlyadarkcocconbeforeigetmygorororororororgeouswingsandflyaway”.

also it's just 10 great songs that slap and pierce emotional armor when you're least expecting it, i have very little interest in how any of these songs apply to joni's biography but they certainly have applied themselves ruthlessly to mine

xp

Also, rejecting the party line on its confessionalism is still buying into that party line. What matters about this album isn’t revelation or honesty or truth, but the way in which Joni uses a series of stylistic manoeuvres to move beyond sounding composed - the seemingly spontaneous expression of character which is in fact an exemplar or skilful performance.

brad gets it

Tim otm, Brad otm

I don’t see cross posts on my phone before posting unfortunately

I agree with you both, and the move to dulcimer signifies her sense of play, but having heard Blue before the others I realized what I wanted from Mitchell.

I mean, this is like me saying I like Far from the Madding Crowd least among Hardy's major novels, or saying Piccarda is the section of Paradiso furthest from God.

it's not that blue doesn't have that stuff, it's just court and spark has it even more

Yeah I know it's relative, but I think you can attribute some of the critical consensus around Blue to that seismic leap in her craft - and again, that's it such a contained, beautiful set of songs - as cult of the artist stuff

as much as

No one has been wrong so far.

Anyway, I admire the Guardian writer for ranking Clouds so high; were I posting my rankings today, Night Ride Home would be top five.

Obviously the critical consensus can tend to dwell on Blue at the expense of her subsequent albums, but I think this is a safe space where we don’t need to explain the charms of Court and Spark.

In any event the only Joni contrastanning i’m particularly interested in these days is for For The Roses.

That's the one where the complexity of the arrangements is beguiling in itself.

Of her classic run it is the only one that feels uncomfortable, I think, but fascinatingly so.

I love Blue but it's sad that it's shadow casts right over 'For The Roses' so comprehensively, ppl are all 'it's just more Blue', yadda yadda.

I basked in the title track, "Electricity," and "Barandgrill" for years without listening to the words.

I'm not taking away people's love for Blue here either, it's just never clicked as hard as some of the others for me. Definitely has some bangers on it of course

Brad and Tim F otm, Alfred otm re: "Night Ride Home".

"The Last Time I Saw Richard" is perhaps the best lyric of all time? I don't know. I can't think of a better lyric. The thing with "Blue" is that it's like, is there a bad song on it? even a "not classic" song on it? "My Old Man" is typically cited as being the preemie of the litter but idk, "he tells me all his troubles / and he tells me all his charms"? wow. I think the sentiment expressed on that song (my man is good) is just somewhat simpler than the more complex emotions that the rest of the album conveys. And that's what's so brilliant about that album, it's not the "confessional" whatever, it's that the songs are attempting to express sentiments that are so complicated and so deep. I feel the stripped-down production of "Blue" heightens the potency of Joni's lyrical brilliance; this is not to underrate her tendencies on other albums toward dressing her shit up, it's just that on "Blue" alone, the music was in service of the lyrics and she is SUCH a lyricist.

"For The Roses" is highly underrated, the albums prior to "Blue" are highly overrated (though the song "Conversation" remains an inexplicable favourite of mine). I don't agree with that Guardian ranking putting "Both Sides Now" so low and "Travelogue" in comparison so high. I'm intrigued that they rated "Shine" so highly, to which I have never listened.

"he tells me all his troubles / and he tells me all his charms"

yet even here she reveals his narcissism while her vocal lets us know she loves him regardless

Isn’t it “tells me all MY charms”?

lol yes

I went from being unfamiliar with all but a few of her songs ten years ago and blowing her off as minor compared to her peers, to her being one of my favorites and at least the equal of Neil and Van. This accelerated the last year as I’ve picked up many of her classic albums on vinyl for cheap.

Some of this probably has to do with getting older. To me there is something so “adult” about Joni - a level of sophistication musically, lyrically, and thematically. She isn’t an adolescent like Bob or Neil. I don’t know much about her, but I almost get the sense some of this comes from her being a woman in a male-dominated field and having to navigate that world. I like the way some of her songs roll their eyes at the men in them - “I love you but come on”. Like she is smarter than everyone around her, but she humors these guys. Anyway, I love her.

Ladies of the Canyon was the first one that got me. Circle Game still spends days in my head at a time. I haven’t bought Blue yet, but have listened to it before. Carey and Last Time I Saw Richard are just incredible, so full of life. Sound and style wise I think I like Hissing the best.

Clouds is... not a particularly great record in my opinion. LOTC is almost as much a quantum leap above it as Blue is above that. Ranking it second is mystifying to me.

About the best thing I learned about David Crosby from the otherwise middling documentary is that he was genuine in his admiration for Joni and couldn't stop talking about her greatness; he even accepts responsibility for fucking up her debut's final mix, which mitigates the air of I-discovered-her.

There's a softness and grain to a lot of the vocals in Hissing that I've never been able to figure out maybe it was it an unusual mic choice, a little like the sound of Douglas Rain as HAL 9000, it's really appealing to me.

there is something so “adult” about Joni

As a so-called grown-up in a steady long-term relationship, I connect with her lyrics far less than when I was a single teenager, partly because I've become indifferent to hearing my personal experience echoed in the words of others, or even my own. Not trying to be contrarian here, I just don't think it's as clear-cut as you make it out to be.

I half-agree with that - the album I now connect with the most emotionally is Night Ride Home perhaps because it is coming from a middle age perspective which I haven’t quite arrived at myself: the “glance back at the sweep of history and destruction” vibes maybe seem more romantic because I am still just about able to romanticise them.

Whereas the lyrics on the seventies albums speak to me more in terms of their craft.